


Snails and Galaxies

by toastypaladin (toastycyborg)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Cuban Lance (Voltron), Galra Keith (Voltron), Gay Keith (Voltron), Happy Ending, Infection, Lance (Voltron)-centric, M/M, Major Character Injury, Mild Gore, POV Alternating, Past Tense, Pining Keith (Voltron), Post-Season/Series 06, Pre-Relationship, Protective Keith (Voltron), Season/Series 06 Spoilers, Sexuality Crisis, Swearing, female pronouns for Lions, the rest of the team is present for one chapter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-09
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2019-06-07 18:48:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 17,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15225615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toastycyborg/pseuds/toastypaladin
Summary: It was competitiveness, back at the Garrison, jealousy that once began as admiration. Keith had just always been so damn aloof, back then, so cool and goddamnhandsome. Lance only made fighter-class because Keith was booted for ‘disciplinary issues’. A second choice, a runner-up. That’d make anyone harbour a little resentment, right?When Lance crash lands on a hostile planet, stranded without power and gravely wounded by aliens that want to eat him, he's forced to rethink some cold, hard truths about himself. Namely, his feelings toward Keith.





	1. Prelude

**Author's Note:**

> _Voltron: Legendary Defender_ and all of its characters therein are property of Netflix and Dreamworks Animation. No copyright infringement is intended in this fanfiction.

_And yet I smell the starry sky_

_and my heart, as always, aches to lie down in lightning._

_I crane my neck, longing to be struck_

_by an unprecedented bolt from the farthest edge of space._

-Makoto Ōoka,  _‘The Galaxy and the Snail’_

 

* * *

 

Lance couldn’t tell up from down.

Septicaemia would do that to a guy. It was hard to breathe, to move … to think. He knew Keith was there … somewhere. Somewhere in the gloom of the Black Lion’s cockpit, pacing. His voice echoed through the fog that was Lance’s head every now and then, kept him tethered to reality.

Everything hurt. Lance didn’t know how long they’d been stranded, only that he felt like shit and was probably going to die before the other Lions found them.

He struggled for air, to stay conscious. Had to. Keith would shake him whenever he started to slip, and it made the world lurch each time. Nausea, vertigo, disorientation, all wrapped up in one gross fever. All he wanted to do was sleep, propped in the pilot seat. Lance hated Keith for refusing to let him.

Well, no … that was wrong. He didn’t ‘hate’ Keith. Never had, not really.

It was competitiveness, back at the Garrison, jealousy that once began as admiration. Keith had just always been so damn aloof, back then, so cool and goddamn _handsome_ , even with that dumb mullet. Ergo, jealousy. Lance wanted to be as cool as Keith Kogane, so badass, to look so good that the ladies flocked to him.

Lance only made fighter-class because Keith was booted for ‘disciplinary issues’. A second choice, a runner-up. That’d make anyone harbour a little resentment, right?

After finding Voltron, though, and especially after Keith’s two time-warped years in space, he was different. They’d both matured, and Lance….

Lance was glad he wasn’t alone right now. Most of all, he was glad _Keith_ was the one with him. If Lance hated anything, he hated how long he’d taken to realise how he really felt about the guy.

The ‘rivalry’, the arguments … it wasn’t dislike. Quite the opposite. He wished he’d figured it all out sooner.

A fresh wave of pain in his leg snapped Lance to brief clarity. Impending death made him reflective, it seemed, sentimental. He whimpered, clutched the tightly bandaged wound until what little strength he had left him again.

Keith tried to keep him talking, but Lance could scant understand his words. Everything that breached his mental haze was fuzzier than those blocky aliens Pidge adopted, when the group had been separated in the wormhole. The pain devoured him. It hurt, it _hurt_ so much, and then there was numbness, a wall of nausea that left him confused and unable to remember where he was.

The warmth of another body in the cabin barely touched Lance, did nothing to soothe his shaking. He was too hot and freezing cold at the same time, dizzy, undersuit covered in sweat and blood. His own blood, and that of the creatures Keith had mowed down to reach him after they crash-landed. Its smell made him gag.

 _Keith_.

Yeah, Keith was there. Peripherally, Lance sensed him. Muttering reassurances, offering sips of water from the last dregs of their supplies.

_I’m here, buddy._

_Just stay focused, okay?_

_You’re gonna be all right._

_C’mon, Lance, eyes open. Stay with me._

_I’m here…._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my first foray into the Voltron fandom. Apologies if characters are OOC. Feedback in general is very much appreciated, thank you :)
> 
> [Tumblr](https://toastypaladin.tumblr.com/)


	2. Eye of the Storm

 

The mission started out simple enough.

With the Castle of Lions gone, travelling to Earth was no easy feat. That meant many stop-offs to restock supplies, and detours in response to distress calls. They picked up one such beacon in the Procyon System, a sparse stretch of space governed by an unstable red dwarf.

A civilian convoy had been making its way through the quadrant, only to be struck and left powerless by a solar flare from the turbulent star. Pidge intercepted their garbled transmission in passing. She cleaned it up as best she could, and Team Voltron raced to the rescue.

They stayed in their separate Lions. Frequent solar storms had reduced most of the system’s planets to rubble, asteroid fields too dense for Voltron’s combined form to navigate. The Red Lion, the most agile, weaved through the debris with ease, raced ahead while Allura used Blue’s sonic weapon to clear a path for the others.

The convoy’s ships hung helpless in the void, backlit by the fiery star. As he waited for the team to catch up, Lance studied the celestial body. He watched it burn and pulse, a hot shade of magma-orange, saw tendrils of its wild energy lick and curl outwards into the dark expanse of space. He saw no pattern, only danger.

“Uh … should it be doing that?” he said. Red’s screens flickered.

Pidge made a concerned noise across the Lions’ static-riddled comms. “My instruments are going nuts,” she said. “That star’s putting out a _lot_ of energy. It must’ve hit those aliens with a CME. If it builds into another, we could be in big trouble, too.”

Lance cocked his head. He knew _some_ space stuff, but not as much as Pidge. Professor Montgomery’s classes felt like a lifetime ago. “‘CME’?”

Hunk’s mild tones crackled in his ear. “Coronal mass ejection,” he said. “The star spits out super-heated plasma and electromagnetic radiation. It messes up pretty much everything electronic – communications, navigation, power, et cetera.”

Lance gave Red’s controls a pensive squeeze, and tried to picture the explosion. “So … like popping a zit?”

There was a hum from Coran, hovering at Allura’s elbow in the Blue Lion. “More like a sneeze,” he said. They’d said goodbye to Romelle a few days ago on Olkarion, whose residents had kindly fitted Shiro with a new prosthetic arm. “It’s quite a sight, beautiful and deadly.”

In Black’s cockpit, Shiro set a hand on Keith’s shoulder. He was still weak from the whole dead-but-not thing, for now content to let the younger man fly the winged Lion. “Either way,” he said, grave, “we have to get those people out of there.”

Krolia shifted her weight, just as serious on her son’s other side. “From the state of the star, we don’t have much time.”

Keith sensed she was right. Calm in the pilot seat, he glanced up at the white-haired Paladin. “What’s the plan, Shiro?”

Six small transport ships made up the convoy. The team stayed separate: Voltron would only be able to move one ship at a time through the asteroid belts, where the Lions could haul five at once. They would push the vessels to a safe distance from the red dwarf, beyond the debris, where Pidge, Hunk, Coran, and Krolia would try to get their systems back online. Keith and Allura would keep watch in their Lions, while Shiro and Lance dispensed supplies as needed. The travellers had been stranded for days already, judging by their beacon, likely in need of food.

In the meantime, Pidge kept an eye on the star – watching for radiation spikes.

For once, Lance stayed quiet as he flew.

Steering Red to nudge his transport through the debris field proved quite the challenge. Red was fast, sure, but he wasn’t as good a pilot as her former Paladin. Lance refused to admit that aloud, though; Keith would never forget it. Guiding the powerless ship between tight-knit chunks of rock was _hard_ , especially with Red’s HUD flickering like a badly tuned TV set.

As if to prove the point, a boulder bounced off Red’s flank. She growled, jaws locked around their cargo’s hull.

“How’s the star doing, Pidge?” Lance asked through clenched teeth.

Pidge’s response came garbled through his helmet, audio more messed-up than before. “Hot,” she said. “It’s working up to another emission. Ten minutes, tops.”

Lance caught the omen in her words. If the star sneezed, anyone near it would be in trouble. He urged Red to speed up, pushed his transport quicker through the field to a steady chant of “come on”s.

As he began to pull away, he was scolded. “Careful, Lance,” Allura’s distorted reprimand jabbed his eardrums. “We won’t help these people by shoving them headlong into asteroids.”

Progress was slow, and stressful. Pidge kept the others vividly aware of the next emission, though her countdown was an estimate at best. At the seventh reminder, Lance almost sniped at her for pestering. Keith beat him to it.

“All _right_ , Pidge, we get it. Don’t give yourself an aneurysm, we’re almost out.”

At Keith’s tone, Lance smirked. “You tell her, mullet.”

Pidge’s sigh cut off with a crackle.

Once he’s escorted his cargo through the debris field intact, Lance wheeled Red around to check on the others. The Black and Green Lions weren’t too far behind him, Blue some distance away, and Yellow of course at the rear. Hunk at least had the smarts to fly in reverse, rubble pinging off his Lion’s armoured back with their ship cradled to her belly.

The Black Lion emerged from the field not long after Red. She came to a halt and released the ship in her jaws, then opened her chest hatch. Shiro and Krolia swam out, a pack of food and medical supplies slung over Shiro’s shoulder. They both propelled themselves toward the rescued transports, set to help the travellers however they could.

Lance hummed. So far, so good … but they hadn’t saved the whole convoy. He fired Red’s thrusters to dive again into the belt, aiming to retrieve the final ship before the next solar flare. Red was more than quick enough, he thought.

“Lance!” Keith’s voice sliced through Red’s cockpit. The comm. static got worse, his HUD a fragmented mess of broken displays and readouts. “What ar- -ou doing?!”

Lance put Red into a barrel roll, swooping between chunks of shattered planet like a feather on the breeze. “Grabbing the last one, duh,” he said. He spotted still-intact planets through the belt, their crusts razed by old flares. Another roll, flawless. Take _that_ , Keith. Lance hoped he was still watching, amazed by his piloting skills.

The thought made him grin. Impressing Allura would be great, but raising _Keith’s_ eyebrows? Totally worth a little sunburn.

“-ance, fall back,” came Shiro’s firm tone. “-oo dangerou- -ot enough time–”

“ _Relax_ , big guy,” he sighed. “I got this.”

Red broke the inner edge of the field, on a beeline for the final transport. It spun sluggish in empty space, unlit. Red’s glitchy scanners told him that its crew and passengers were still alive. The hull protected them from the sun’s radiation, but–

Lance sat forward, cockiness forgotten. “They’re almost out of air in there,” he said, suddenly cold. Forget showing off: this was serious. “We can’t wait for the star. If we don’t get ’em now, they could suffocate!”

His response held so much interference, he couldn’t tell who it came from. “-n’t Lance – any secon–”

Lance ignored them. There was no choice: those aliens would die if he didn’t help.

He slowed his Lion in approach, and had her take the last transport in her mouth. Then he flipped her one-eighty, ready to hurtle on a return course for the edge of the system. Beyond the asteroid field, he could just make out the glints of the other Lions. Shiro would be so proud. They all would, and the ship’s passengers would be so grateful that maybe he’d get a kiss or two from the chicks.

Even Keith would have to praise him. That would make Lance’s whole _year_.

Around him, the cabin began to flash in caution.

Red’s HUD sputtered so violently that Lance cringed. Her alarms blared, but he shrugged them off. They were almost back into the belt. He urged the Lion on, away from the star, certain he had enough time to get away.

He was wrong.

Through the shrieks of static in his helmet, he caught snippets of his teammates’ shouts. All yelling at once, he didn’t understand their frantic warnings until Red threw a video feed onto the screen.

The picture was broken, but identifiable. The red dwarf, right behind him, _alive_.

Its surface bubbled like magma, coils of white-hot fire looping out against the black. Plumes of energy churned, whirled like smoke, raw power. The largest yellow spot glowed brighter even as he watched, the plasma around it seeming to darken as if sapped of its heat. Ready to blow.

 _Shit_.

He slammed Red’s controls forward. She put on a burst of speed – for about half a second. Her screens went dead with a sizzle and the stink of burning, and the cockpit fell dark. The flare knocked her out. She started to drift, revolving as the transport had. Said ship slipped from Red’s jaws, floated away in the other direction.

Lance shrank back. They were _fucked_.

He jostled Red’s controls, thin breaths deafening in the sudden silence. “Come on, girl!” he cried. Mouth dry, he slapped at where her touchscreens should’ve been. “Guys! Hello?! C’mon, Red, wake up! Get us out of here!”

The Lion didn’t respond.

As she slowly twirled to face the red dwarf, bright-hot light flooded the cockpit. The cabin’s temperature rose, but Lance’s sweat stayed icy. He dared not look. Instead he rattled the controls like a madman, raised an arm to shield his vision from the blinding star.

It took him all of five seconds to panic.

White veined the largest yellow spot. It was pointed straight at him, like Sauron’s eye, a massive, twisted tendril of deep red plasma curled between Lance and it. It was bigger than a mountain, maybe bigger than _Earth._

The smoky loop churned, swelled, then exploded outward.

Lance braced.

The emission struck Red _hard_. It punched her reeling away from the star, tossed Lance out of his seat. If Red’s alarms still worked, they would have been screaming. He slammed into the cabin wall and was pinned under monstrous G-forces, the Lion devoured by incredible heat and light.

In the strain, Lance blacked out for a second. When he came to, he found himself floating weightless near the cockpit’s roof. Red was in freefall: the blast had hurled her into the orbit of a nearby planet, and that world’s gravity seized the Lion hungrily. They were set to crash, less than half a minute from impact.

Gasp strangled, Lance kicked off the wall to propel himself toward the pilot seat. Adrenaline made him vocal, cursing in rapid-fire Spanish as he seized the controls. Red didn’t react, didn’t surge to life and pull up like he prayed she would.

“Guys!” he yelled into his helmet. For once, he didn’t even care that his voice cracked as he swung into his seat. The dark rock of the world below rushed closer, spinning end over end through the blaze of the atmosphere. His insides lurched, mass tugged this way and that while they spiralled. “Red’s fried, I’m going down!”

No answer.

Lance didn’t expect one. He braced for impact, mind blank with fear and determination. He’d survived dozens of crash landings before, but that didn’t mean it would be _fun_.

Nah, this was going to hurt.

As the ground surged closer, something big hit Red first.

The noise was biblical, an almighty _smash_ and screeching of metal, and Lance almost lost his grip as Red was knocked spinning even more wildly than before. He swallowed his lunch for the second time that day, and righted himself in time to see something familiar streak by.

It was the Black Lion, also wheeling in freefall, metal scorched.

Lance gaped. “ _Keith_ –?!”

In his mind, for half an instant, Lance saw him. Dumb mullet whipping, scar bold against his fear-paled cheek, those bright, amethyst eyes huge as he plummeted.

Then Red hit the ground, and Lance saw nothing.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Romelle and Keith's wolf are absent because I had no clue how to fit them in. Also, it's been a long time since I studied space phenomena; apologies if anything is inaccurate!
> 
> [Tumblr](https://toastypaladin.tumblr.com/)


	3. The Hunted

 

He remembered the last time he’d crashed like this.

The landing was softer, then, spat out of a destabilised wormhole and onto a frozen planet. The ice broke Blue’s fall, and sinking to the ocean depths was rather pleasant to someone who’d grown up in a resort town. The water … it had reminded him of home. He liked water. Beachfronts, bikinis, that rich salt smell, warm rain on his skin….

Oh, _ow_.

This was not Varadero.

With a groan, Lance peeled himself off the wall of Red’s cockpit. The Lion lay on her side, the pilot seat up on Lance’s right. Everything hurt, the throbbing ache of a body tossed around like a sack of potatoes. He felt bruises welling under his armour, joints stiff and sore.

Battered … but alive.

He half-crawled, half-climbed up to the controls. The lamp on his wrist washed the dim cabin with stark shapes and heavy shadows, dust motes ghosting before the beam. He couldn’t see outside: Red’s head must’ve been buried in the dirt. She was still without power, as unconscious as a giant robot cat could be.

Lance ran through a mental checklist, both for Red and his armour. Navigation, communications, power … all dead.

On the plus side, his suit’s oxygen still worked. That was a _very_ important plus.

As he forced open the cockpit doors, Lance remembered the last thing he’d seen. The Black Lion, right before they crashed. It didn’t make sense. Keith had no reason to follow him back into the asteroid field: Red was faster, and more than capable of hauling the last transport ship on her own.

Lance froze, halfway down the access tunnel. Crap, he realised, _the transport ship_. He gulped, prayed the vessel made it. With luck, the others had come to its rescue. He hadn’t seen it in the fall – maybe the coronal mass whatever had only hit _him_.

So, why had Keith…?

Lance had to kick his way out of Red’s bay doors. He gave the stuck ramp an apologetic pat, and hopped down to the ground to inspect the crash site.

Oh boy.

Even without scanners, he knew at a glance that this planet’s air wasn’t safe to inhale. They’d landed in a rocky desert, the sky an eerie green, black sands ruffled by a cold wind. The landscape stretched barren, desolate, cracked earth scorched by countless solar flares. He saw no signs of life anywhere, no trees or buildings, an uninhabited world.

Overhead, vibrant auroras danced.

Despite his situation, Lance couldn’t help but stare heavenward. The curtains of colour were nothing like Earth’s Northern or Southern Lights. They were spectacular, vivid, thick streaks of teal and pink and orange where solar radiation pounded the planet’s thin atmosphere. They filled the entire sky, luminous and grand.

Lance yanked his gaze back down. Now wasn’t the time to admire the scenery.

“Can anyone hear me?” he said, tapping the side of his helmet for good measure.

Silence was the only answer he received.

Thinking fast, Lance spun on his heel. He paused upon spotting a tall hill, metres to the west. Higher ground. With a hiss of triumph, he sprang into a jog toward it. The loose dirt made climbing tough, but Lance scaled the knoll with aid from his jetpack.

Once at its peak, Lance crouched and took out his Bayard. He willed the weapon to its sniper rifle form, and peered down its sights to survey the area.

There was … nothing. No creatures, no civilisation, no flora. Just sand, rocks, sand, burned earth, and sand. More mounds like anthills rose from the dirt here and there, one with a cave-like opening far to the south.

Beyond it, through a heat haze, he spotted the Black Lion.

She looked no better off than Red. Flat on her back, limbs splayed … Lance swallowed hard, and scanned the surrounding dunes for Keith. The Paladin was nowhere in sight – at first. As Lance watched, though, he saw a very familiar young man jet-jump to climb the mountain of the Black Lion’s chest. Keith straightened and brushed himself off, and stood shielding his eyes as if he _had_ climbed a mountain. The temperature made him shimmer, like an illusion in the dark sand.

Lance had never been happier to see him.

He yelled as loud as he could, but Keith was too far away to hear. Around two miles of desert separated them, rocked by the steady rumble of distant thunder. Lance licked his lips behind his visor, apprehensive.

What if Keith went searching for him, in completely the wrong direction? Could he see Red from there? Maybe Lance should make a beeline for the Black Lion, and hope that Keith returned to her if he wandered off. How much air did they have in their suits? Was it even safe to be outside, exposed to all the solar radiation?

He kind of missed Pidge’s always-ready-with-an-answer thing.

Through his sights, Lance watched Keith hop down from his Lion’s chest. On impulse, Lance did the first thing he thought of: he swung his weapon left, and fired a shot at a nearby hill.

The dirt bank exploded, sprayed rubble and sand in all directions. The dry wind carried the dust high into the air, a cloud – with any luck – tall enough for Keith to spot from his Lion. Lance shot at another hill and then another, detonating both.

Hasty, he pointed his gun back toward the Black Lion. He spied Keith on the ground where he’d landed, stock-still, squinting this way. Lance’s heart skipped, and he dismissed his weapon to wave both arms like a madman.

“Keith, here!” he bellowed. Keith was a speck in the distance, but Lance could swear he saw the dot wave back. Lance started to laugh and jump, kicked more dust into the air. _I’m a genius_ , he thought. Who needed flares or fireworks when they had sand and ingenuity?

Smug, Lance stepped forward to slide down his mound.

High school math said that if he and Keith walked toward each other at a brisk pace, they would meet in the middle in about fifteen minutes. Then, they could find someplace safe and put their heads together for a way off this planet. So long as the solar flares continued to mess with their comms, there was no way to contact the rest of Voltron. Waiting seemed like the best option, but he knew Keith didn’t have much patience.

Lance kept moving once he reached flat ground, stride confident. He set his Bayard on his hip, and covered his ear through the helmet. “Just checking,” he said, “but you still can’t hear me, can you, mullet?”

This time, Lance got an answer – though not the kind he expected.

At first, he thought it was an earthquake. The sand shifted under his feet, made him stumble and splutter. He stopped dead. The hairs on his neck stiffened and rose, and he instinctively snatched up his Bayard again. Vibrations reached him through the soles of his boots, and Lance urged the weapon into its rifle shape.

Something was below him.

He heard it: a quick, faint, muffled scuffling. It was _fast_ , sweeping from his right to left deep beneath the earth. Lance held fire. He’d never hear the end of it if he caused an intergalactic incident, by shooting what turned out to be a harmless race of mole-people.

“I’m a Paladin of Voltron!” he cried. “I come in peace!”

The ominous noise grew louder, closer – then stopped.

Lance held his breath. Nothing happened, long enough that he lowered his guard in confusion. Whatever it was, it must’ve moved on. He forced his shoulders down from where they’d shot up to his ears, and started forward again.

At his first step, the ground exploded.

The eruption threw Lance back. He fell to his rump but kept hold of his gun, and gaped as a monstrous creature lurched out of the dust cloud.

It was big – seven feet tall and five wide at a guess – some kind of bug or arthropod. Four serrated legs cut the earth like mantis scythes, its back hunched and spiny, ‘head’ opening into a mass of sharp teeth and tentacle-like tongues. No eyeballs, no nose or ears, just a wet, hungry mouth at the top of a leathery shell.

Lance scrambled backward in a panic, and the monster lunged.

Its front scythes pierced the sand where he’d lain microseconds before, and Lance opened fire. His shots ricocheted off the monster’s exoskeleton, didn’t even char it. The beast scuttled after him like some horrid mutated spider, and let out an ungodly chitter that would stick in his brain for months.

It slashed again. Lance leaped aside with help from his jetpack, shooting from the air with a battle-cry. The alien stayed put, shrugged off his attacks. Lance touched down in the dirt and at once the creature turned on him, scurried in pursuit with spines bristled. His Bayard’s energy blasts did nothing to it. It swung those jagged appendages with lethal speed, and Lance dodged with another jump.

Midair, he thought fast. The creature was blind and deaf, no nose to speak of, but it still followed his movements somehow. Did it sense his vibrations in the sand, the same way an Earth spider felt when prey got stuck in its web?

That was all well and good, but he couldn’t stay airborne forever. His jetpack wasn’t built for sustained flight outside low gravity.

The moment his boots touched dirt, the monster shrieked and whirled to chase him. He aimed to fire a blast right at its ugly mug – and was thrown off-balance when a second, near-identical creature burst up from the ground behind him.

“You _serious_?!” he spat. He collapsed his useless Bayard, and dive-rolled aside as both aliens flung themselves at the point where he’d landed.

He turned on his heel, and ran. If they sensed him through the sand, could he stand on Red? A high vantage point for better shots, plus a blind spot to the creatures? Or a patch of exposed rocks – that cave to the south?

A third bug-beast erupted from the dust ahead. In his rush to swerve around it, Lance’s feet slipped out from under him on the loose terrain. He dodged its scythes as best he could; with four legs to keep track of, it was a miracle that none of them nicked him. He fired his jetpack for an added boost, hit the ground running, and changed course toward where he’d seen the Black Lion.

He needed _help_.

His energy weapons did nothing to the monsters. Maybe Keith’s swords could cut their shells? The ravenous creatures thundered after him, diving back into the sand to gain speed and leap out again. Lance ran as fast as he could, yelled for Keith. Why did they have to land so far apart–

Oh, wait!

Lance seized his Bayard, glanced down at it mid-sprint. That time in the training deck with Allura – how had he…?

Something caught his ankle, tore it back, and Lance tipped headfirst and ploughed into the dirt. He couldn’t imagine the scrapes he’d have if he hadn’t been in armour. Friction burns were soon the least of his worries: the alien that had caught up to him hacked a limb at his chest, screeching. Lance managed to roll away, and then a second scythe swung out of nowhere. It sliced clean through the protective plate on his right thigh, pierced the flesh beneath.

Lance screamed in pain, and _reacted_. The Bayard glowed white in his grip, then surged out to pierce the monster’s abdomen.

The beast let out a frightful shriek, reared up with scythes aquiver. Yellow gunk oozed down Lance’s broadsword, trickling faster as he gave the weapon a twist for good measure. Lance then remembered the other two monsters, and yanked the long blade free in time to avoid their oncoming attacks. The stabbed one swayed while the others pursued him, clicking its hideous jaws madly.

Lance jet-jumped clear and stood his ground, breathless, squeezed the hilt of his Altean broadsword. Once more, he had no clue how he’d formed it – but that didn’t matter. He could think about it when aliens weren’t trying to eat him.

The injured creature charged in retaliation. Lance whirled to evade, swung his sword in the movement to sever one of its scythes at the joint. The beast staggered, off-balance, and tipped forward to collapse in the sand. It didn’t get up again.

Lance had no time to gloat. The other two fiends both made savage attacks, almost swift enough to hit him, and Lance started again in the direction of the Black Lion.

“Keith!” he called, praying their comms had somehow repaired themselves. “C’mon, man, I could really use your help!”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Tumblr](https://toastypaladin.tumblr.com/)


	4. Reunion

 

Keith almost thought it was a mirage.

It felt like hours since he’d set off, breaking into a jog every now and then. It may well have been hours, for all he knew. The alien bugs bursting up from the ground certainly slowed progress. They were much more bothersome than the desert insects back on Earth.

He cut them down with ease, on a beeline for where he’d spotted the Red Lion. It didn’t take him long to figure out how the monsters worked: they sensed his footsteps through the sand. Keith stuck to the rocks and fewer beasts emerged in search of a meal, giving him space to think.

Man, did he have space to think.

Lance’s dust signal had been pretty smart. Keith gave him that. Though, he also felt like shooting the terrain may have stirred up the monsters in the first place.

No – ‘the first place’ was Lance getting them both into this mess, by crossing the asteroid field a second time in the middle of a solar storm.

Keith grunted as he launched himself to the next rock. Lance was always trying to show off. Everyone knew he was a decent pilot, and everyone knew the Red Lion was the fastest. There was no need to prove it. It had sounded like he’d tried to explain himself right before the emission, but their communications were too garbled by the flare to make it out.

Whatever it was, Keith couldn’t think of a single reason for such bull-headedness.

Lance may have begun to mature lately, enough that Red accepted him as Voltron’s right hand, but it seemed he still wasn’t above moments of idiocy.

Keith … wished that he was.

Lance had so much potential, had earned Keith’s respect a hundred times over. Yet, he still acted like a show dog. He was so busy trying to prove his worth, he tripped over his own feet and made himself look a right fool. Even the ‘rivalry’ he’d invented between them … Keith saw it as something Lance used to measure himself by, a way to mask his insecurities.

It was as if Lance thought the rest of the team didn’t appreciate him, or saw him as a weak link.

That was the biggest pile of bullshit Keith had ever heard.

As he navigated the sun-scorched dunes, the Black Paladin sighed to himself. The solar storm seemed to be dying down, at least. Flares set the sky alight less often than when they’d first crashed, and the temperature had also dropped below sweltering. Once the radiation settled, their Lions would wake up and they could fly off this awful planet.

Before that, though … they had to find each other.

Of course Keith was worried about Lance. _Of course_ he’d chased him back into the debris field, and tried to get him out before the emission hit. He’d have done it for any of the team.

He jet-jumped to the next outcrop of rock, and made to wipe sweat from his brow before remembering he had his helmet on. He needed a haircut: longer bangs were too warm for this.

_And he couldn’t stop thinking about Lance._

Keith didn’t let people get close. The cold, distant walls he hid behind were a defence mechanism. He’d been alone most of his life, passed between foster homes, rejected time and again. Shiro was the first person who’d cared, and even _he_ had struggled to get past Keith’s barriers in the beginning.

With Lance, though … it just sort of _happened_.

Sure, they argued – but most of the time, Lance started it. Keith only returned fire because he liked seeing Lance all worked up. The guy was so passionate, animated, easy to provoke, and Keith found that charming. _Lance_ was the one who took the insults seriously.

When Lance had assured Keith that he’d follow him as the new Black Paladin, Keith hadn’t been able to express how much he appreciated it. He’d said thanks in his own way – a playful jab – and Lance smiled in return.

Keith liked that smile.

It was different to the usual cocky smirk, the sort Lance wore when hitting on girls or puffing out his chest. It was honest, soft. Keith couldn’t bring himself to push Lance away after that.

He didn’t know exactly when he’d started to _like_ Voltron’s self-proclaimed sharpshooter, but that moment was a pretty safe bet.

The two years in time-warped space had given him plenty of time to think about it. Time to _miss_ Lance, and wish things were different. To wish he didn’t have these feelings. Lance was into girls. He liked Allura: it was obvious in how upset he’d been over Lotor getting close to her. Allura was smart, strong, beautiful. A _princess_.

And she … she wasn’t Galra.

Even if, by some miracle, Lance swung both ways … what chance did Keith have against someone as perfect as Allura?

Sounds of distant fighting reached his ears, snapping Keith from his reflections. They weren’t quite the sounds he expected: not gunfire, but grunts and the telltale rush of a blade through air.

Perplexed, he sped up. He scaled his current stretch of boulders, uphill, toward the noise. The next swathe of rock was too far to jump to, even with his jetpack. Keith calculated the risk, and leaped. He covered most of the gap by air, but had to briefly touch sand before springing the rest of the distance.

Another tentacle-faced, mantis-armed bug-beast exploded from the ground as if summoned by his footstep. Keith sidestepped its swipe, then cleanly beheaded the monster with his Bayard. It fell lifeless, and Keith climbed to the peak of the outcrop.

Down across the dunes, not too far away, he saw Lance. Fighting those monsters, with … a sword? Since when did Lance know how to use one of those? Bug corpses littered the ground behind the Red Paladin, a trail of bodies leading from his Lion. The area he’d traversed was all dirt and dust, no safe harbour to pause upon.

Keith scowled. Lance’s inexperience with the broadsword showed; his movements were heavy, slow, tired. He wasted energy in big swings and fancy rolls, fighting with a weapon he didn’t know how to use.

Keith opened his mouth to call out to him, to tell him it was safe up here on the stone. A realisation stopped him. There was something else on the ground around Lance. Blood. Not viscous and alien-yellow, but a familiar shade of red.

 _Human_.

Streaks of it oozed from a crack in Lance’s thigh armour, staining the shiny white crimson. He was unsteady on that leg, falling out of a dodge as one of the four brutes on him lashed out. Lance swung and missed, and the weight of his weapon pulled him into a sideward stumble.

Keith readied his own Bayard. If – _when_ – they got off this planet, he’d have to give the rookie swordsman a few lessons.

 

* * *

 

He tried to emulate how Keith moved.

Lance had seen him fight a million times, and it never looked this taxing. Did his space genes give him crazy upper body strength? No fair. Lance dug in his heels, readied his broadsword. He wasn’t sure how many times he’d slithered free of the monsters’ claws, but he knew he couldn’t do it much longer. Putting weight on his injured leg had started to _hurt_ , even through the adrenaline.

The thought of running back to Red grew more appealing by the tick. Maybe he could hide inside her, seal himself away and wait for Keith to come find him.

Like a coward.

The creatures scuttled closer, closed around him in a ring formation. Their split jaws clicked and quivered, salivating around those nasty teeth and tentacle tongues.

“I don’t taste good, y’know,” he shot. “Go back underground and I’ll let you keep your legs. Arms? Whatever, you get the picture.”

His threat fell flat.

One bug pounced. Lance skidded to avoid it, right into the path of a second. He ducked under its slash, dug his sword into the earth to keep from falling over. It took more effort than it should’ve to yank the blade free again – and in the tug, he swung. He caught the closest alien diagonally, across the thorax. Yellow gunk sprayed from the cut, and the beast shied away with a shriek. Safe inside his helmet, Lance didn’t dare imagine what it smelled like.

He bolted. Two fiends made to impale him at once and he dived between their scythes, twirled in the fall to stab the nearest. The blade didn’t connect, this time, but the creature did. It rammed itself hard into his front, and Lance was tackled backward in a sprawl.

He hit the ground hard, dropped his Bayard on impact. The broadsword spiralled away and landed point-down in the sand, buried to the fuller.

Lance lay winded, unable to process what had happened. One of the creatures suddenly filled his view of the auroras above, its raised scythe agleam. Lance curled to protect his vital organs, shielded himself with a yelp.

The blow never came.

There was a sharp sound, the _snick_ of severed muscle, and another terrible alien squeal. A dull weight thudded to the dirt near his ear; mystified, Lance peeked out. He found himself nose-to-point with a detached bug limb, and jerked back. Something then rushed past him – something two-legged and furious, stomping as it ran to catch the monsters’ attention.

Lance gawked. “K- _Keith_!”

The Black Paladin drew the four beasts away from Lance, Bayard in one hand and Marmora blade in the other. When one fiend changed its mind, attracted instead to the vibrations of Lance standing up, Keith threw his Bayard like a spear. The weapon embedded itself in the monster’s head, brought it instant death.

In a fluid movement, Keith wrenched Lance’s broadsword from the ground and tossed it back to him. Lance caught the weapon with a whoop, enthused by his teammate’s arrival.

Keith yanked his own Bayard free from the fresh corpse. Lance covered him, earned a nod of thanks. Two more creatures then surged up from underground, sand streaming off their carapaces as the red sun pulsed above.

When Keith whirled toward the new beasts, Lance noticed something.

Maybe it was the weird light, but the whites of Keith’s eyes looked yellow all of a sudden. Lance quickly realised that he wasn’t seeing things: Keith’s pupils were thin and catlike, savage in the fury of combat. Keith bared his teeth – sharp and jagged in a way they hadn’t been before – at the surrounding creatures, swords primed.

“Can you run?” he called to Lance.

Lance had no time to be unnerved by Keith’s appearance. He swung heavy at a charging alien, clipped one of its mouth-tentacles. With regard to Keith’s question, he wasn’t sure. His thigh _burned_. “Yeah?”

“Then run for the rocks!”

He didn’t need telling twice. With Keith at his back, Lance dashed for the stony hill over which Keith had arrived. Each step was agony. The Paladins jet-jumped up the slope, cutting down more creatures on the way, and flung themselves up the last peak to the safety of solid ground.

Lance’s leg gave out upon landing. He fell and rolled, came to rest flat on his back. His Bayard clattered away, reverting to its basic form. Keith took a defensive stance over him, lithe and tense, all-too-ready to decapitate the first thing that got too close to Lance.

For over a minute, the bug-beasts searched for their vanished prey. They dived into and out of the sand, confusion in their chitters and spidery movements. Keith kept his swords raised, counted down from a hundred to calm himself.

Winded below him, Lance watched the yellow gradually fade from Keith’s eyes. He gulped. What the hell was _that_?

After a short eternity, the monsters lost interest and burrowed back underground.

At last, Keith let his blades drop. Thank god. He shrank the weapons to their smaller forms, and stuffed them away with a frown. An abrupt laugh from Lance made him jump, and he glanced down to find the Red Paladin sporting a tired grin where he lay prone on the rocks.

The sight relaxed Keith better than counting. “You okay?” he said, crawling aside.

Grit crunched under Lance’s helmet as he tipped his chin to meet Keith’s stare. “Oh yeah, man,” he said, and sat up. Halfway through the movement, Lance jerked with a gasp. He doubled forward and took his injured leg in a tight grip, clutching the broken plates with head bowed. “P-peachy.”

Keith knelt properly beside him, and hunched to inspect the damage.

Through the jagged hole in Lance’s armour, he studied the wound. The gash continued to ooze, dark blood pooling in its depths. Grains of sand dirtied the discharge, the torn edges of skin raised and pale. By some miracle, the alien scythe hadn’t nicked an artery. Keith also caught no glimpse of bone, a second small mercy.

Keith sat back. “The Lions all have First Aid kits,” he said, tone level to keep Lance calm. Pallid behind his visor, Lance exhaled his pain when Keith stood. “Let’s head back and clean you up. The route to the Black Lion is safer.”

Still seated, Lance flashed a wonky smirk. “Guess you’re not squeamish?” he said. At Keith’s raised eyebrow, Lance nodded to his scarlet-streaked armour. “You got right up in there, didn’t even flinch.”

Keith retrieved Lance’s fallen Bayard, then offered him an arm. After a pause, Lance took it. Keith helped him upright and held on, supported the younger man’s paltry weight until he found his balance. “Does gore bother _you_?”

Lance’s blue stare dipped to the scar on Keith’s cheek, and Keith grew self-conscious. Sensing his discomfort, Lance deflected. He stepped back to stand on his own, and refused to let Keith steady him when he wobbled.

“What happened back there?” said Lance, once he took back his Bayard. At Keith’s questioning tilt of the head, Lance tapped the visor over his own mouth. “You were … well, _Galra_ , for a sec. You okay?”

It was Keith’s turn to deflect. “I’m fine,” he lied. “Come on. Let’s move.”

They set off at an easy pace, slow enough that Lance wasn’t too challenged. He put on a brave front, but Keith caught his whimpers whenever the ground became uneven and put strain on his leg. Leaping between rocks was harder: Lance relented in the end, allowed Keith to half-carry him over the longer jumps.

More than once, he stumbled and touched the sand. Without scolding or complaint, Keith cut down the bugs that surged up to investigate. Keith pretended not to notice Lance sweating behind the helmet, the grimaces when he thought Keith’s attention was elsewhere.

Eventually, they reached the Black Lion. Keith propped Lance against her shoulder, forced his own way through the cargo doors to search for medical supplies. When he re-emerged, he was surprised to find Lance still upright. The Red Paladin looked drained: the hair clung to his forehead as if fresh from the shower, but he managed a smile upon Keith’s return.

They retreated inside the Lion for medical attention.

Sealed safe in the cabin, Lance stripped off his armour to give Keith better access. Though he’d often imagined similar scenes, Keith forced himself to ignore how well Lance’s undersuit hugged his swimmer’s physique. The skin-tight suit was stained beyond repair, wet to the heel where its wearer had bled inside his armour.

Keith sat him in the pilot seat, and used his knife to widen the hole in the fabric. It was ruined anyway, and he needed to make sure he did a good job.

The medkit didn’t hold much: sterile gloves, gauze, cleansing wipes, distilled water, bandages, tape. Keith cleaned the gash as best he could, all too aware that Lance would need stitches without use of a healing pod. Lance tried to keep still and quiet, biting back shouts as Keith scooped out the sand. The pain wore him out more than the journey here: Keith was nothing if not thorough.

Half an hour later, Keith sat back and wiped his brow. He’d removed his helmet, so Lance wouldn’t hurt his knuckles if he decided to punch him. Somehow, it hadn’t come to that. Keith stuffed what remained of the tape back into the kit, and tried to judge by eye if the bandages would hold.

Lance slumped in place. “I’m gonna pass out for a bit, if that’s okay,” he said.

Keith cracked a smile at his stab at humour, and rose. The stink of alien gunk filled the cabin, encrusted on both of their armours. Keith stooped to collect the pieces of Lance’s gear from the floor. “I’ll clean these off outside,” he said. “Yell if you need me.”

Lance hummed, already drifting. At the footfalls of Keith’s departure, though, he startled awake. “Hey–” he blurted out. Keith stopped dead, and Lance faltered. “I, uh … thanks. For coming to get me.”

In the gloom of the cockpit, Keith faced him. His brow knitted beyond his control, crossed by thick stripes of his hair.

“Why’d you double back for the last transport?” he said. “The convoy … they were safe in their ships. The radiation couldn’t mess up their systems more than it already had. They’d have been fine until after the flare.”

“No, they wouldn’t,” said Lance. He hauled himself higher in his seat and folded his arms, the image of a pouting child. “Red said the last ship was almost out of air. They’d have suffocated if we waited. I said so on the intercom, but … I guess you guys didn’t hear me.”

Keith’s shoulders sagged. The weight of dread lifted from his chest – still there, but a little lighter. “We didn’t,” he said. He dropped his sightline, and sighed. “Well, I’ve no right to lecture anybody about being reckless. Just … be more careful, next time.”

Lance met him with narrowed eyes. He hummed again, assent. Keith then turned on his heel, and let himself out of the cockpit.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Tumblr](https://toastypaladin.tumblr.com/)


	5. Stayin' Alive

 

Lance dreamed of home.

Sugar-white beaches, crystalline water, palm trees and soft clouds. Nothing he’d seen in space compared. He could taste it: the ocean, fresh and free, marine life and salt. _Heaven_. He remembered a cliff overhanging the water, warmed underfoot by glorious sunbeams. He heard the roar of the waves, the foamy whispers of breakers washing against the shore. Tasted that sweet sea breeze, ice cream – his mother’s recipe – homemade garlic knots and pizza from that cute little shack on the front.

He awoke in tears, stiff-backed where he’d nodded off in Black’s pilot seat. The chair was too big for him; he’d slipped down as he slept, neck crooked and one shoulder squashed higher than the other.

He moved to stretch, and yelped.

Sharp pain ripped through his bandaged thigh, and Lance clutched the limb in shock. His breaths came shallow and fast, laboured, heart racing as his body temperature spiked. The agony pulsed with his heartbeat, white-hot for a few ticks before dulling enough that he could think again.

It left him winded, light-headed in the aftershocks.

“A-ah, shit….”

Lance dragged himself into a more agreeable position, and squinted around the cockpit.

The cabin was darker than before, quiet and still. The smells within grounded him, metal and electronics. He sank back in the headrest, reassured by another familiar scent: Keith’s hair. The chair’s upholstery was saturated with it. Lance should’ve expected as much; with no more Castle to call home, the team had taken to sleeping in their Lions while off-world.

What Lance would give to be off-world right now.

Keith wasn’t around. He’d returned from cleaning their armour of alien gunk some time ago, but left again to scout the nearby desert for signs of civilisation. Keith promised to be back before Lance knew it, said he’d look for kindling to build a fire when night rolled around.

From the low level of light in the cabin, that was hours ago. The eerie sky had turned a deep peacock-green through the dead glass of Black’s windshield, dim heavens still crossed by lurid auroras.

The dancing colours told Lance that the solar storm hadn’t stopped, still too much electromagnetic interference to power up the Lions. That meant life-support was off, too. They had enough air to last a few days, more than enough time for the rest of the team to come rescue them.

Unable to get comfy, Lance flopped out his arms. He was too warm – the kind of warm where he didn’t know what to do with himself. His undersuit clung like a second skin, damp from perspiration. Coupled with a deep ache in his bones, he could swear he’d just run a marathon. It would cool down once night fell, right?

Keith had set the injured Paladin up with rations from Black’s supplies, and Lance had eaten what he could. Coran’s energy bars never sat right in his stomach, but such was all they had out here. Neither of them were too keen on learning if the monster bugs were edible.

Unbidden, a shiver gripped Lance. It snapped his spine taut, wrung a groan out of him. He curled in on himself, confused as his damp flesh went abruptly cold in a chill.

That didn’t feel right.

“Keith?” Lance called out. The word left him as a rasp, mouth parched and tongue like sandpaper. A wave of weariness passed over him, and he sank lower in the chair. The fire in his leg continued to pulse, insistent.

Through his bewilderment, a troubling thought occurred.

What if the aliens’ scythes were poisonous? He dug nervous fingers into the meat of his thigh, above the bandage, nails biting half-moons through his suit. Wait, or was it venomous? Toxic…? In his nausea, he couldn’t remember the right word.

Lance didn’t realise he’d closed his eyes and nodded off again, until he heard Keith force open the cabin doors.

The instant Keith saw him, he knew something was wrong.

Lance looked _awful_. Clammy, sweaty, quivering like a newborn foal. Blotchy red had bloomed through his bandages, stark against the white. Keith rushed to him. He tore off one glove, bare hand exposed up to the cuff of his gauntlet, and – no nonsense – laid his palm on Lance’s forehead.

Lance moaned at the contact. Keith’s skin felt blissfully cool against his own. He reached up, pressed the soothing extremity harder to his skull.

Keith let him. “You’re burning up,” he said, hushed with concern. He removed his helmet, glad to breathe something other than the recycled air inside his suit. “How do you feel?”

Lance flipped Keith’s hand, crushed the cooler side to his brow. “Hot.”

Keith had to agree with him, but probably not in the way Lance meant. With some difficulty, and a huff of protest from Lance, he worked his limb free. “You should drink something, for a start,” said Keith. “I’ll need to re-dress your leg.”

That brought Lance back to clarity. “You’re not going digging around again, are you?” he said, hoarse. “’Cause, just so you know, that fucking _hurt_ , man.”

Keith blinked. It was rare to hear Lance curse as part of a sentence. A single ‘fuck’ or ‘shit’ usually made up the whole statement, most often when he missed a shot or took a hard knock in combat.

Remembering that he’d been asked a question, Keith shook his head. “We need to keep the wound as clean as possible, and you’ve already leaked through those.”

He pointed. Lance followed the line of his long finger, and gulped when he saw that Keith was right. He touched the inside muscle of his own leg, tentative, and flinched at a new spike of pain under the bandages. “You think it’ll scar?”

Keith gave him a wry look. “You have something against scars?”

Somehow, Lance managed to look offended. “On _me_ , yes,” he said. “You know how much work it takes to get skin this beautiful?”

Keith didn’t trust himself to answer.

Once Lance steeled himself, Keith unwrapped the gash. Fresh blood dribbled out, plipped dark and thick to the cockpit floor. Keith wiped away the rivulets with delicate care, jaw clenched. He cleaned Lance up to the best of his ability, medkit almost depleted, but the wound stayed raw and red. It looked worse than before, puffy and foul-smelling.

Was it infected?

Who knew what weird alien bacteria had gotten into the cut, both from the sand and off the creatures’ scythes. Still … it had only been a few vargas. Lance’s leg was scorching hot to the touch, yet stippled like gooseflesh, his whole frame trembling. Discretely, Keith checked Lance’s pulse through the tattered undersuit. Its pounding was a little too quick for Keith’s liking, erratic.

“How’s it look?” said Lance. He couldn’t bring himself to examine his own wound, already on the far side of queasy.

Keith held his gaze. Then, he forced a smile. “Nothing serious,” he lied. With fake nonchalance, he began to dress the wound in clean gauze from the medkit. “You’ll be fine. A few hours in a healing pod, once the others find us, and you’ll be good as new.”

Lance watched him grab the slim roll of bandages, entranced by his dextrous fingers. “I guess you didn’t find anyone else out there?”

It took Keith a beat to figure out what he meant. “No,” he said, gruffer than he would’ve liked. “I walked for miles, but … it’s all sand and stone. I don’t think there’s ever been sentient life on this planet. It’s just us, and the bugs.”

Lance’s brow rumpled, but he said nothing.

Keith focused on his work. He wrapped the cut tighter than the first time, hoping to press the torn edges together and prevent more leakage. He lacked medical training: if there _was_ an infection, should he leave it uncovered? Should he use antiseptic, or would that damage the open flesh further? Keith chewed his lip, frustrated by the unknowns.

He hoped the red dwarf calmed soon. The quicker they left this planet, the better.

Keith found Lance a water packet in the Black Lion’s supplies, and told him to take it easy. Once Lance settled, with the auroras outside for entertainment, Keith sat himself at the rear of the cabin and tried to meditate.

He reached for his Lion, sought out her Quintessence.

Black wasn’t a machine, exactly. None of the Lions were. They were … Keith didn’t have a word for it. They were _alive_. Conscious, enigmatic entities … neither magic nor science. Their souls burned bright – and that warmth was what Keith searched for, in the void of his mind and beyond.

After a while, he found her. A soothing presence, huge but gentle, soft amid the nebulous, purplish aether. It felt like she was asleep, and Keith couldn’t rouse her. The solar flare and electromagnetic radiation had done a number on her, it seemed. He couldn’t sense the other Lions through her, not even Red, couldn’t bring her back online.

His energy and unease wasn’t enough to invigorate the Black Lion, though he did hear a low growl in the back of his mind. He felt Black brush up against him, the sensation somehow apologetic.

“It’s okay, girl,” Keith muttered. He set his exposed palm against the wall of the cockpit, soothing. Its cool metal seemed to purr under his skin, appreciative. “Save your strength. I’ll take care of both of you.”

 

* * *

 

 

Staying in the cabin led Keith’s mind to dangerous places.

When Lance’s chills got worse, Keith wanted to curl up around him in the pilot seat. He wanted to hold him still through the shivers, would gladly sacrifice his own body heat if it meant Lance felt better. Each time Keith worked up the nerve to offer this, though, Lance’s chill would break back into a raging fever. He’d kick off the emergency blanket they’d found in the cabin’s supplies, would pant like a dog on a midsummer’s day.

Keith didn’t know what to do.

Darkness settled over the alien desert, frigid and barren. Black still lacked power, no noise from their helmets’ comms either, but the Lion’s hull insulated her passengers from the worst of the night chill. Coloured light from the auroras painted the cockpit’s walls, filtered through the front screen. Keith’s genes let him see well enough in the gloom, ears pricked for signs of trouble outside.

He couldn’t stand it – the waiting. He wasn’t an engineer, like Pidge or Hunk. He couldn’t build a beacon or some sort of radio to reach the others, or repair the Lions enough to fly. Nor was he Shiro or Allura, whose inspirational words would at least give Lance hope. Even Coran would know a way to cheer him up, or at least distract him with Altean jargon until their rescue or escape.

He was just Keith. Keith fought, a warrior, a living weapon. Combat was in his veins, savagery and strength. What use was any of that right now?

All they could do was sit here and wait for the solar storm to pass.

Hours crawled by, but Keith shunned the very idea of sleep. He kept a vigilant eye on Lance, watched him deteriorate in what could only be an infection.

Lance himself couldn’t process what was happening.

He was exhausted and dizzy, nauseous, an ache in his muscles and lava in his leg. He rationalised most of it away: he was tired and sore from the crash and swinging his broadsword about, and felt faint because he was hungry. They didn’t have much food aboard the Black Lion: Shiro had taken most of it to dispense among the stranded transport ships. The leg pain needed no explanation, but….

On some level, Lance knew something was wrong with him.

Every time he said this, however, Keith would assure him he’d be okay. He felt worse and worse after each accidental nap, time elusive with no tech to track it and nothing to do.

So, Lance sat back and watched the auroras.

There was something … hypnotic, about them. He remembered all sorts of things as he slumped in Black’s pilot seat, memories of Earth. Must’ve been the fever. He remembered school trips, tropical storms, girls he hadn’t thought about in years.

Some of them, he couldn’t name. Lance frowned. That wasn’t like him. He tipped back his head in broken thought, called up a memory – a tourist who’d come to Varadero with her family when he was fifteen. She’d stolen his heart, all long legs and freckles and terracotta skin. Tall, dark hair, a giggle like a choir of angels. They’d spent four days together, before she flew home and forgot all about him.

What the hell was her name?

“What’re you thinking about?”

Keith’s voice prodded him back to full consciousness. Lance didn’t answer at first, thoughts tangled and muddy. He was so tired, he couldn’t see straight.

“Home,” he said. The thermal blanket slipped off him, crumpled on the floor. It helped.

From the wall of the cabin, Keith hummed. He stood with arms folded, still in full armour minus the helmet. Ready to fight at a moment’s notice, should the buglike creatures try to break into the Lion.

Lance let his head loll. Minutes passed. Hours, maybe. He couldn’t tell. The crash seemed like forever ago. When he jolted back to himself, drunken curiosity over took him. “Would you ever visit Cuba?”

Keith frowned, disarmed by the question. “I dunno,” he said, and shifted his weight. “I don’t like beaches. You come from a resort town, right?”

“Yeah,” said Lance. His brain filled with images that made him want to cry. He felt like he was on a carnival ride, teacups or a carousel, balance spinning even though he knew he was still. It frightened him, made him emotional. “The sand’s so white, the water’s so blue … and clear….”

Keith let his expression soften. He could tell, Lance wasn’t entirely _here_. The fever was making him delirious. “You miss it.”

With great difficulty, Lance faced forward. He stared out into the alien night, watched the exotic colours twirl and weave across the sky. “I r’member a cove,” he said. “A little nook under a cliff, at the shore. I’d scuba dive there … show tourists around. Dolphins, turtles … fish in colours you’ve never seen. It’s paradise, man.”

Keith half-smiled. “Sounds nice,” he said. The ghost of his good mood fell. “I’m guessing the tourists were mostly babes in bikinis?”

Lance let out a laugh, the sound manic in the calm of Black’s cockpit. It died in ticks, the Red Paladin once more absorbed in his cotton-filled mind.

Now that he thought about it … no, actually.

It was a pretty even mix, girls and guys. Some of the dudes _slayed_ in trunks. They had … aesthetic. His brain trundled on, no-one at the wheel, and he found himself imagining taking Team Voltron for a dip once they got back to Earth.

Allura would look fantastic, as usual, dusky skin made all the richer by a healthy dose of sun. Shiro had no shame; he’d rock board shorts or something, and project total coolness while doing it. Pidge could use a tan … though Lance had no idea what sort of swimwear she’d opt for. In truth, he felt weird thinking about it. Hunk would probably stick to a T-shirt. He’d hide in the shade, somewhere he could sample the local ice cream in peace. Lance knew all the best stalls.

And Keith….

Lance refocused on the Black Paladin. Keith cocked his head, questioning.

“You’d look good in Speedos,” Lance slurred.

Keith stared.

Not privy to Lance’s train of thought, the compliment caught him off-guard. By the time he processed it, Lance had turned away again. Keith felt heat rise in his ears, unsure what to make of the words they’d fed him.

Was that … flirting? Keith crushed the idea as soon as it budded, dismissed it as wishful thinking. Lance didn’t see him that way. He dared not allow himself to hope.

Lance, for his part, couldn’t stop thinking about Keith in tiny swim shorts.

It was a glorious mental image. Those two years in warped space had been very generous to Keith, made him taller and broader and filled out everything in-between. Lance imagined washboard abs above a nice, tight waistband. Creamy skin, powerful thighs, those biceps that strained when he fought. A film of sweat on his lip from the heat, long hair knotted and wild. Those bright violet irises, strange but striking, aglitter in the Caribbean sun–

Lance blinked.

Wait.

Hold up.

That was … wait.

 _Keith_?

Accusing through the fog, Lance twisted once more to the Black Paladin. Keith squinted right back, all confused and conflicted where he leaned on the wall of the cabin. His folded arms had stiffened across the chest of his armour, jaw tight. A muscle rippled under the scar, a self-conscious twitch as pink blotches dusted his cheekbones.

Lance was shocked to find that he hadn’t imagined any of it. Holy shit. Since when was Keith so attractive?

Since when did _he_ find _Keith_ so attractive?

Another full-body chill distracted Lance from this revelation.

He shivered violently. The shudder tugged his bad leg in an unpleasant way. Nausea came next, overwhelming, and Lance doubled forward with his face in his palms. His skin broke out once more in gooseflesh, tight over his hunched spine, hairs bristling in the sudden absence of heat.

Footfalls roused him, and he struggled alert in time to watch Keith stoop by his side. Keith collected the thermal blanket from the floor, and laid it back over Lance. Lance couldn’t react, mental processes gridlocked. Keith again pressed a palm to his forehead, checking his temperature.

Displeased with the results, Keith stepped back. He bent to grab his helmet from the floor, and slotted it into place. “Sit tight,” he said, quick and muttered through the visor. “I’m gonna go see if I can wake Red.”

He turned and strode off before Lance could protest, left him alone with his confusion in the gloom of Black’s cockpit.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Tumblr](https://toastypaladin.tumblr.com/)


	6. Blackout

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Check out my new Voltron-centric [Tumblr](https://toastypaladin.tumblr.com/), where I plan to post my Klance artwork and fic updates amid reblogs. I'm also looking for other Voltron/Klance blogs to follow; if you have one or know of some good examples, please let me know!

 

Keith moved fast.

He followed a now-familiar route across the dunes, hopped between rocks and boulders to avoid triggering the bug-creatures. Night made the auroras brighter, doused the world in a blue-orange glow. The dark sand glittered around him like powdered obsidian, whipped into eddies at his heels. Below the horizon, the planet’s sun continued to rage; solar flares flickered like distant lightning, reflected on the underbelly of the heavens.

As he raced across the cruel desert, Keith stretched his mind toward the Red Lion.

She didn’t hate him, exactly – but neither would she be swayed by him, like Black had by Zarkon when Shiro was her Paladin. Red was just … temperamental. He’d neglected her during his time with the Blade of Marmora, and now she had Lance. Keith was glad Lance had been the one to take over as her Paladin; he wouldn’t trust anyone else to care for his old Lion.

Red’s ‘mind’ shifted at Keith’s psychic touch, and he got the impression of her rolling away from him to stay asleep. The CME and continual radiation had weakened her, as with Black. Keith vaulted a patch of sand and kicked off the next rock at once, arcing clean over the dangerous terrain. He didn’t want to leave Lance alone too long, should his condition worsen further.

The thought terrified Keith.

If the infection got into Lance’s bloodstream, they could kiss their shot at rescue goodbye. Pidge would build something before that happened, he told himself – a dish strong enough to punch through the solar winds and find them. Even then, though … entering the planet’s geosphere might affect the other Lions, like when they’d chased Lotor onto Thayserix. They’d have to come up with some sort of shield, a way to shrug off the interference.

Pidge and Hunk were geniuses, and Shiro and Allura would never give up. Keith couldn’t, either.

The Red Lion came into view, over the same hillock from where he’d spotted Lance earlier. He put on a burst of speed. For now … they had to survive. He urged his Bayard into its sword form, ready to dismember any super-sized arthropod dumb enough to get in his path.

Ultimately, the trip was in vein.

Keith cut down a small legion of bug-beasts, only for Red to remain inert when he reached her. Even once he forced his way inside and climbed up to her pilot seat, she wouldn’t budge under his touch. She stayed sprawled on her side – whether from malfunctioning systems or sheer stubbornness, Keith didn’t know.

Either way, the result was the same. They were still stranded, with no way to contact the others or send up a distress beacon.

And Lance was … not himself.

That was the worst part, the most worrisome. He’d started to drown in his fever, enough that he’d flirted with Keith. With _Keith_. What else could the Speedos comment have been? Under better circumstances, the Black Paladin would’ve been thrilled. Flirtation meant he had a chance – meant that Lance was somehow, _miraculously_ interested in him.

Now, though, it meant Lance was in a bad way. Sick, hurting … out of his mind. And Keith couldn’t fix him.

Keith dropped from the pilot seat, landed on all fours on the wall of the upturned cockpit. Anxiety kept him down, lead weight in his gut. He’d never felt so scared. The closest was when he’d seen Lance sprawled on the Castle floor, bruised and dying after jumping to shield Coran from a Galra bomb. At least then, Keith could fight. He’d punched Sendak and everything turned out okay, even if Lance didn’t remember any of it. Now, though….

Tension tightened his body, gums itching in a way he’d begun to recognise and associate with rage. He couldn’t shake the image of Lance in Black’s pilot seat, distressed and alone, his whines pitiful in the night-drenched cabin.

Frustration boiled over. A snarl ripped its way out of Keith, and he smashed a fist into the metal wall underfoot. As expected, but not as he hoped, Red didn’t react.

The ringing silence that followed gave Keith pause, brought him back to himself. This wasn’t Red’s fault. He unfurled his fingers, laid an apologetic hand on the panel he’d punched. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, and losing control wouldn’t help Lance. He hissed out his anger, hair in his face, and willed himself to calm down.

Before returning to the Black Lion, Keith looted Red’s sideways halls for any supplies he could find. There wasn’t much: a little food, some water, an extra emergency blanket, and another First Aid kit.

He prayed they wouldn’t need it.

 

* * *

 

Lance had found his way to the cockpit floor by the time Keith got back.

He didn’t know how long Keith was gone – he’d passed out again – but when the Black Paladin returned, at once he was shaking Lance awake. It took Lance a few moments to find his place in space and time. He tried to bat Keith off, though gave in when he realised he lacked the strength to stand by himself.

“I think I threw up,” he admitted, a foul taste in his mouth. His head spun, an awful pounding behind his eyes. Vaguely, he was aware of Keith walking him across to the pilot seat. “I dunno where….”

“I’m sure I’ll find it,” Keith’s sigh split the fog.

Gravity shifted, and what little breath Lance had jolted loose when Keith forced him into the chair. Lance heard rustling, a wonderful breeze on his skin – then kicked in feeble complaint when Keith tried to cover him with the blanket. He was sure he’d melt beneath it, tempted to peel off his sweat-soaked undersuit to vent the absurd heat inside him.

Keith gave up. Instead, he squatted and set the sack of Red’s supplies down on the floor nearby. “I brought more food, if you think you can manage it.”

Lance forced himself to sit up, indignant as the blanket slid from his lap. “That a challenge?” he shot. He swayed in twisting to Keith, moist palms slipping on the arms of the chair. “Whoa … I can see three of you. I could get used to this….”

Again, Keith chalked the comment up to delirium. Lance wasn’t in his right mind. He’d hit on a breadcrumb if his fever spiked high enough. Keith kept his head down, focused on rummaging through the pack. “How’s your leg?”

Clumsily, Lance grabbed his thigh to check it was still attached – and choked in agony. Spots burst in his vision. His whole face twisted, mouth falling open in a silent scream. Keith surged forward, seized Lance’s wrists and pried them away to keep him from hurting himself further.

“Don’t jostle it!”

Lance whited out from the pain. The next thing he knew, Keith was fumbling to stuff a water packet into his hand. Lance gripped the drink on puzzled autopilot – and then Keith was gone, across the cockpit, halfway through a sentence Lance couldn’t remember the start of. From the stink of Altea’s answer to bleach, he’d found the vomit.

“Bet you’re glad I’m not Hunk,” said Lance, with all the eloquence of a stoner.

Keith cast him a vacant stare. Then, he laughed.

The noise took Lance aback, knocked him for a loop. He could count the number of times he’d heard Keith laugh on both feet. Lance felt himself smile, and sank into his chair. It was a pleasant sound, one that set him adrift in nonsense half-thoughts.

Keith laughed to hide his fear.

Lance looked _dreadful_. The shivers wracked him non-stop, now. His flawless skin had turned a wan shade of grey, words slurred as if inebriated. It was happening too fast: they’d crashed half a day ago, at most. Whatever alien bacteria had gotten into Lance’s wound clearly did not agree with human physiology. They were lucky he hadn’t had an allergic reaction.

Keith felt a sudden flash of anger. He hated that they were stuck here alone, with no help or means of escape. He wished he could _do something_. Anything. Lance was in real trouble, and all Keith could do was offer him water and watch.

He’d never despised anything more than the red dwarf that landed them here.

The itch returned. Keith had never been good at containing his emotions. Anger was the hardest to control, the biggest repeat offender. He ground his teeth, tasted copper when a fang nicked the inside of his lip. He wanted to lecture Lance, scold his self-sacrificial behaviour. He wanted to rush outside and kill as many bug creatures as he could find, find catharsis in violence – but now was not the time.

For Lance’s sake, he balled his fists and stepped back from his temper.

“Tell me more about Cuba,” he said.

The command surprised Lance from his stupor. Keith sat down cross-legged beside him, on the floor, held his foggy blue gaze with as much intensity as he could muster.

“Uh,” said Lance, fighting for focus. He flagged lower in the chair, reached numbly for the blanket as his body temperature dropped again. Keith was there in a heartbeat, handing it to him, and Lance blinked hard. “What’cha wanna know?”

They talked for what felt like days.

Lance was overjoyed to relay his best and worst tourist stories, though they grew somewhat disjointed in the spells when the Red Paladin lost his lucidity. He described his favourite beach spots, favourite foods, all manner of things Keith didn’t know he wanted to know. Preferred clothing, allergies, past pets and the names of his many relatives. Keith got lost in his voice, absorbed it all.

Whenever the words stopped trickling from Lance’s lips, Keith would prompt him with a question or a squeeze of his shoulder. He was determined to keep the younger man talking, keep him awake.

Should he nod off again, there was every chance Lance wouldn’t wake up.

So long as Keith pretended he had a normal fever, though, everything was fine. Once he told himself that Lance’s was a non-threatening sickness, he actually started to enjoy the lazy discussion. He learned a lot about his fellow Paladin, and it calmed him. One day, they would remember this and laugh.

Perhaps a varga later, out of the blue, Lance shifted the conversation away from himself.

“Does it hurt?” he asked, head cocked where he’d tried to drape himself over one arm of the chair. His eyelids fluttered, dozy. “Your teeth. All … sharp. S’it hurt?”

Keith shifted on the floor. He didn’t find this topic as enjoyable. “No,” he said. Grimaced. “Sort of? It’s … hard to explain.”

While Keith dithered, Lance took this opportunity to really _study_ him.

He hadn’t bothered so far, that he could recall, since Keith’s return from warped space. There hadn’t been chance, with the Lotor craziness and pretty much living in their Lions ever since. To be honest, before today, Lance couldn’t remember the last time they’d talked in person, and not over a video call.

 It was bizarre, how much Keith had changed in – to Lance – such a short time.

He looked older, for sure. His eyes were more focused, sharper, the naivety of youth calmed into something steadfast and knowing. The longer hair was a given; it got in his face more, shaggier. Suited him. His bone structure had filled out a smidge, chin still narrow but jaw and shoulders both widened. More well-formed, hard angles and solid muscle. It was a different kind of buff to Shiro, still thin and lean but with meat in all the right places.

He was the same, yet not. Still _Keith_ , but … honed. Refined, like a blade at the grindstone.

And when he’d _slipped_ earlier, in the fight with the bugs, when his mother’s genes had shone through in the heat of battle … that sure was something. Dim, Lance wondered what he’d look like if that part of Keith ever took over.

“I kinda like ’em,” said Lance. He sat up with difficulty, wiped his cheek on his shoulder. His undersuit was so saturated already that the motion only smeared the sweat around. “S’cool, actually. Galra Keith … he’s cool. Your eyes, all … all yellow. Does it happen when you’re mad?”

Keith traced his blunt nails over a divot in the floor. He hadn’t known his eyes changed colour. The teeth, yes: it was hard to ignore the pressure of gums realigning to make room for fangs. “I’m not sure,” he said. “It’s only happened a few times, since I fought … the clone.”

Lance didn’t broach the subject again. All the same, Keith appreciated how Lance hadn’t shown fear or disgust toward his alien features.

They continued to talk, about whatever random topic popped into Lance’s addled mind. He grew less and less coherent, often trailing off mid-sentence. Every now and then, he would forget himself and slip into his mother tongue.

Lance speaking Spanish was one of the most beautiful things Keith had ever heard.

In those moments, Keith would just sit and _listen_. He had no idea what Lance was saying, but it felt somehow personal. Intimate, even. Quick syllables, trilled ‘r’s, melodious. Enchanting.

Nobody else on the team had heard this. Only Keith.

Unprompted, Lance made a soft sound. Not quite a whimper, but something between a wheeze and a grunt as his wound throbbed. He grit his teeth through it, tried to concentrate.

“D’you ever wonder …” he said, desperate to distract himself. He broke off when the pain grew too great, and Keith inched closer in concern. The scrape of his armour on metal roused Lance into continuing. “You ever think about … how we got here?”

Keith frowned. “We crashed,” he reminded him. “The Lions, the solar flare–”

Lance shook his head, the motion lost in a shiver. “Voltron,” he said. Keith fell silent. Lance panted, agitated with his temperature in flux. “Everything’d be different if … if you weren’t kicked outta the Garrison.”

Keith pondered this.

If he hadn’t been expelled … he wouldn’t have lived in the desert. He wouldn’t have been drawn to the Blue Lion’s energy, wouldn’t have known to await Shiro’s arrival. Shiro would still be stuck in quarantine on Earth right now, if Keith hadn’t helped break him out. It was on _Keith’s_ bike that the humans who became Team Voltron had escaped the crash site, after all.

“Zarkon would’ve won,” he mused.

Lance wriggled in his chair, foil blanket crackling. “Drama queen …” he said. Keith rose to his knees, unsure how to make him more comfortable. Lance settled and clicked his tongue, made an odd growling sound in lieu of clearing his throat. “I meant … us. We wouldn’t’ve met again. Would you even … remember me, from school…?”

Pensive, Keith raked a hand through his fringe. What was Lance getting at? He weighed his response for a long while – then froze, unnerved when he realised Lance was staring at him. Keith hadn’t released his hair, his whole face exposed and vulnerable.

Lance wore an expression Keith hadn’t seen before. It held none of the usual ‘Lance’: nothing brash, nothing suave, just … open. Honest and somehow naïve, awed, like a Balmeran seeing the sky for the first time.

“I never noticed ’til now …” he murmured, “… how pretty you are.”

Keith let his hair flop. “I … what?”

Lance didn’t seem to hear him. Pain swelled in his thigh, a million miles away, a faint sensation that reminded him he had limbs. “I missed you when you left,” he said, still quiet. His voice broke, cadence all over the place. “I had everyone else … Hunk, Pidge, Allura, Fake-Shiro … but … I was lonely.”

Keith sank back down, drew his legs to his chest and hugged them. Was this real?

Behind his knees, he hid a smile. He remembered how Lance had called him cool – ‘Keith’s bigger, cooler, grizzled older brother’. _Lance_ had been the one to notice Keith’s changes, in the video call after his time away. None of the others had said anything. That proved Lance paid attention, if nothing else, memorised all the little details of Keith’s appearance.

He remembered the width of Lance’s grin – how happy the sharpshooter had been when Keith hailed the Castle after retrieving the clone. Lance had brightened in an instant, had cheered the second his newly scarred face filled the screen.

Maybe … maybe things weren’t as one-sided as Keith thought.

“Were you lonely, too?” said Lance, crooked in the pilot seat.

Keith snapped from his bliss. _This isn’t Lance_ , he reminded himself. It felt like stabbing himself in the chest, punishment for daring to hope. _This is fever-talk_. It meant nothing, changed nothing.

So, why did it feel so _heartfelt_?

“Being alone doesn’t bother me,” he lied.

It didn’t used to. Not anymore.

From the pain – emotional, not physical – that crossed Lance’s waxy face, Keith knew he saw through him. Awkward, he fell silent to watch the light show outside. The auroras had begun to ebb at last, fading to wisps in the pin-pricked sky. The first faint traces of dawn lit the horizon, inky black edged by gentle pinks and golds.

Lance, meanwhile, sank further into delirium.

The fever lowered his inhibitions, and through the haze – like a spark – a thought popped into his woolly mind. Any other day, he’d stop to interrogate such an idea. As it was, the swelling exhaustion shut down his brain-to-mouth filter.

“We should date.”

Somewhere on the floor beside him, he heard a rattle of armour as Keith went rigid. Lance had no energy to turn and look at him; he stayed faced forward, cocooned in his blanket. He felt rather proud of himself, pleased he’d come up with a solution to their mutual loneliness.

It made perfect sense. If being apart made them both sad, why not be _together_?

Heart in his mouth, Keith waited for Lance to explain himself. When no such reason came, Keith peeked at him over his kneecaps. The dying auroras danced in Lance’s half-lidded eyes, his posture limp and slack. He’d stopped shivering, stopped squirming, but the colour hadn’t returned to his skin.

“Date?” Keith repeated. He refused to imagine it, fear and joy and terrible hope at war within him. “Lance, did you … are you asking me out?”

Lance didn’t respond.

The Red Paladin slumped, features scrunched beneath a fresh wave of agony in his thigh. The heat – worse than before. Different. _Incomprehensible_. It was too much, like venom radiating up through his body. Cold sweat broke out on his neck, his brow. _Too much_. The back of his head hit the chair’s upholstery with a bone-jarring thunk, chest tight and ears ringing.

He couldn’t tell up from down.

_Everything hurt._

All he wanted to do was sleep. Maybe then, the pain would go the fuck away.

“Keith …” he managed, suddenly afraid of the dark that smothered the cabin. For a tick he forgot where he was, weary and disoriented. Moisture blurred the edges of his vision, lashes like thorns. “Keith, are you … are you still there…?”

Keith appeared in front of him, swam through the shadows. “I’m here, buddy.”

Lance couldn’t swallow, couldn’t think, senses shrouded in smog. “Stay,” he said. He flinched at another ripple of fire, fought for air as tears rolled down to bead on his chin. Oh god, it _hurt_. Hands landed on his shoulders, comforting. “Don’t … don’t leave me….”

“I won’t. Just stay focused, okay?”

Somewhere distant, he thought he heard a crackle. Electric. It made no sense, in a flash reminded him of the last time he’d died. The shield station, taking the blast for Allura. It seemed pointless now. The pain he felt then was nothing compared to this.

“You’re gonna be all right.”

The memory of Allura’s face didn’t comfort him … but Keith’s did.

He was glad it was Keith. Lance wished he’d realised sooner, wished he’d figured himself out back when it would’ve mattered.

The mental pictures that came to him were fuzzy, abstract, but the sob they wrenched from him was a happy one. He imagined so much and not enough – the good times they could’ve had, if only Lance weren’t such an idiot.

“I’m here, Lance. Stay with me.”

He was glad it was Keith.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Tumblr](https://toastypaladin.tumblr.com/)


	7. All Good Things

 

…

“…lived with the Wilsons in Colorado….”

Somewhere in the bliss of darkness, Lance frowned.

The movement was involuntary, an unconscious twitch of the brow. A stray thought, ephemeral. He floated unaware, like kelp, lost in the blind depths of the ocean that embraced him.

In a movie, once, he’d heard that the afterlife took the form of whatever you believed in. _They believe it, so it happens._ Lance wasn’t sure what he himself believed, what followed death. Reincarnation was a nice idea, he supposed. Maybe his afterlife was the sea. This weightlessness sure reminded him of it, a return to the place where he felt most at peace.

If he were reborn as coral in some Caribbean trench, he wouldn’t mind.

“…first thing they did was put up a ‘no boys allowed’ sign on their tree house. Can you believe that?”

The murmurs rumbled from somewhere far away. A deep voice, rough around the edges but rich, almost like a purr. Familiar, calm. Reassuring. Lance wanted to swim in those syrup-thick syllables, caught in the membrane between oblivion and reality.

Shapes pinged behind his closed eyelids. A kaleidoscope, like when bright lights make shadow puppets of the veins inside one’s retinas. Lance denied them, turned away in the black of his mind. He wanted to stay here, in the dark, cradled by that soothing voice.

He didn’t know where he was, but that voice sounded like home.

“The placement only lasted a few months,” the bodiless voice continued. “Next, it was the Spencers in Arlington. Their son was a real jackass. Heh … kinda like you.”

At the teasing tone, Lance stirred.

He _knew_ that tone.

Peripherally, he realised he was neither dead nor underwater. Instead he was flat on his back, dry and still, recycled air on his face and hands. The plush, warm surface on which he lay beckoned a return to the void … but the chatter at his right had the lilt of one expecting an answer.

He let his head droop to the side, toward the voice. The rustle of a pillow filled his ear, stray curls crushed between it and his skin. He didn’t quite feel _there_ , shrouded in fog. Hunger gnawed at his insides, a weary weakness in his joints, but….

“Lance…?”

The pain was gone.

When he cracked his heavy eyelids, the first thing Lance saw was Keith.

The Black Paladin sat haloed in light, close enough to touch, a shadow against a solid white background. Through the blinding glare, Lance watched Keith’s posture crumple in relief. Lance couldn’t make out their surroundings, muddled by the grit of sleep, but he smelled ozone and disinfectant. He smelled _Keith_ , the familiar hair-scent from the headrest of Black’s pilot chair.

Keith had changed out of his armour. That old red jacket looked decidedly small on his shoulders now, dark shirt and pants tight to the point of indecency. Lance squinted at him, disoriented while his vision cleared. The expression Keith answered with held fatigue and affection, that of a mother gazing down at her newborn child.

It was … nice.

Quiet pressed in on Lance’s eardrums. It wasn’t unpleasant – different to the silence of space, or being submerged. The far-off sounds that needled it were foreign, somehow, faint beeps and off-key mutters in a language he didn’t know. He could feel his own pulse in his neck, slower than it had been in a long time.

As the seconds passed, Keith’s thankful air grew concerned. His sharp eyes flicked between Lance’s half-lidded ones and he leaned closer, jacket creaking. “Can you hear me?” he said.

_Don’t … don’t leave me._

_I won’t._

Lance felt his mouth tug up at the corners. Awash in the opiates of exhaustion and gratitude, he spoke without meaning to.

“You stayed.”

He didn’t recognise his own rough voice, detached from reality. A terrible taste coated his tongue, throat like sandpaper. He must’ve been unconscious a while.

The mirage that was Keith made a soft, amused noise. “Yeah, I did.”

With a hum of exertion, Lance managed to shift his gaze aside.

They weren’t in the Black Lion: it was too bright for that. The architecture of the room struck him as alien, but somehow not. Hospitals shared a universal design, it seemed. A windowed wall to his left told him they were on a new planet – one with vast, bejewelled oceans and spectacular sunsets.

The sight took Lance aback, stole his breath away. The water glittered like a sea of sequins, aflame with bold colour beneath the prelude of twilight.

If he ever saw another red dwarf again, it would be too soon.

Fragments of memory returned as he peered out over the alien landscape. The crash, the bugs-monsters … Keith, helping him up off the floor of Black’s cabin. He struggled to separate the pieces from the present, felt like he was drowning in cotton. Drunk, almost. Was this another hallucination, a vivid dream?

Fingertips brushed the back of his hand, careful and warm. It took Lance a tick to process the sensation. Their weight grounded him, and at last he knew for sure that he was awake. He blinked away the haze, and tore himself from the window.

Keith hadn’t moved, other than to reach out and touch his fellow Paladin’s hand. He looked unkempt, dishevelled, long hair knotted and a sheen of grease on his skin. Nervous, as if unsure physical contact was appropriate.

How long had he been there, sitting vigil at Lance’s bedside? Talking to him? Keeping him company, when Lance didn’t even know he was there?

As Lance puzzled through these thoughts, the cogs in his brain became unstuck. He tried but failed to sit up, arms shaking from the effort. The weakened paladin found that he too had been redressed, into his usual long-sleeved shirt and jeans. No sign of his jacket.

“Keith?” he managed. There was no bump of bandages under the denim of his thigh, no sign he’d been injured at all. He rubbed at the spot, confused, felt no leftover tenderness or sting. “W-what…?”

“We’re on Tusliri,” said Keith, words shaped by a soft smile. Had his features always been so expressive? His fingertips slipped away as he sat back in his strangely triangular chair, and Lance spotted his jacket folded in Keith’s lap. “In the next system over from Procyon. The locals helped us power up a healing pod, but you were still pretty beat after Coran let you out.”

Determined but shaky, Lance dragged himself onto his elbows. “Coran…?” he said. He gave his own cheek a few small slaps, fumbling to put the pieces together. “The others found us?”

Keith sat forward again. “No,” he said, sombre. “Right after you passed out, our Lions came back online. The radiation from the star weakened just enough to let us fly. I hailed the team halfway out of the system, and here we are.”

Lance sagged on his elbows, collarbones strained from the angle. Lethargy weighed him down, like nothing he’d ever known. It was worse than the aftermath of Altean combat simulations, utter fatigue.

Keith seemed to sense his woes. “You were in the pod for two days,” he said. Lance nodded along, processing. “Blood poisoning, bad. It’s a miracle you’re still….”

The Black Paladin couldn’t bring himself to finish. As Lance faced away, drawn again to the window by some stray thought, Keith retreated to his own mind.

They’d already lost Shiro, sort of. That hurt bad enough. Lance himself _had_ died once before, protecting Allura. If they hadn’t been able to escape that desert world in time–

Keith steadied himself. _Don’t even think about it._

Everything was okay. Lance was alive, albeit a little frail.

Coran had said he’d be lethargic for a while, but that was fine. They were in no rush to reach Earth. Shiro could take back the Black Lion for now, and Keith would pilot Red until Lance was feeling stronger. For Lance, she’d put up with her former Paladin. Everything would be fine. No harm done, no permanent damage wrought.

So … why couldn’t Keith shake off his anxiety?

Lance hadn’t meant those things he’d said in Black’s cockpit. He was sick, delirious. He hadn’t meant to hit on Keith – it was the fever talking. Lance was straight as an arrow. No question. He had no interest in regular guys, never mind a stubborn half-breed with a short fuse and trust issues.

“H-hey, Keith….”

Now wasn’t the time to bring it up, anyway. Keith squeezed his fists in his lap, wrinkling Lance’s jacket. Lance needed rest, to come to terms with his latest near-death experience. They needed to sit down and stamp out his self-sacrificial behaviour, before someone got killed for real.

“Keith.”

He jumped. Lance was staring right at him, propped up in his bed, a strange hardness to his furrowed brow. Was he … embarrassed? The colour in his ears suggested as much, the flush deepened by the kiss of sunset through the window.

At once, Keith was convinced he’d crossed a line by touching Lance’s hand.

Lance, though, had already forgotten about it, stricken instead by internal screaming over what he’d just remembered.

He wasn’t sure if it was a hallucination, a lucid dream, or – most terrifying – an actual memory. Either way, it meant he had to figure some shit out _fast_ … because holy hell, did it raise some serious questions.

“Before, in Black,” he murmured, twisting the seam of his jeans. “Did I … I think I talked about my tourist cove, back home.”

Keith’s nape grew damp under his hair. Okay, so this _was_ the time to bring it up. “You did,” he said. “‘Fish in colours you’ve never seen’.”

Lance’s heart stuttered. Oh no. Oh, fuck. “Did I … say anything weird?”

Keith hesitated.

Lance was clearly uncomfortable. His posture shrieked of it. Keith could lie, could brush it off and spare Lance the humiliation. Or … he could tell the truth. Clear the air. This could be his only chance. If there was a possibility, however slim, that Lance’s awkwardness now was a result of some sexual epiphany….

Keith had to take it.

“You said I’d look good in Speedos,” he said. “Among other things.”

Lance groaned. He deflated, flopped back down on his creaky bed, and covered his face with both palms.

Keith watched him cringe, unsure what to do. Under normal circumstances, he might tease the sharpshooter. He liked seeing Lance all flustered – but this was too important. Spurred on by hope and no small amount of desperation, Keith rocked in his chair.

“Lance,” he said. Quiet, probing. Careful. “Are you attracted to me?”

Keith gulped as soon as he’d asked the question, went ramrod-straight in his seat. Either answer would settle things, because at least _he’d know_. Of course rejection would hurt, and no doubt prompt him to reinforce the walls he’d built around himself … but he’d know. He’d know, and he could try to move on.

Unmoving, he watched Lance heave a sigh. When the Red Paladin parted his hands, let them slip to rest on the pillow at either side of his head, his expression was … tired. Unreadable, features slack, stress lines smoothed into something drained and overwhelmed.

“I don’t know,” he said. He sprang to sit up again as if poked, began to make jerky gestures while spluttering like a motorboat. “I mean … yeah? You’re so … but I’m not – I mean, I didn’t _think_ I was – I’ve never pictured … with a _guy_ , and….”

Keith stifled a smile. He could feel the heat in Lance’s cheeks from here.

When his lungs ran empty, Lance sagged where he sat. He’d always thought he was a pretty articulate dude, but this was bewildering. _Mortifying._

He did find Keith attractive. So many little things about him made Lance feel … weird. Like a ball of bright warmth had formed in his chest, the sensation of something squeezing his ribcage – but not in a bad way. It made him want to grin, to dance. He wasn’t sure when it started, or why, but it was _powerful_ and he wanted to touch him and hold him and never let go.

It was familiar, and yet so strange.

“I thought you liked women.”

Keith words made him flinch. When he glanced up, there was no accusation in his peer’s gaze. Instead Keith’s seated stance remained open, relaxed, a genuine curiosity. It was almost maddening. He didn’t know this side of Keith well, so patient and cooperative.

Keith misread Lance’s silence, thinking he hadn’t understood why Keith would assume such a thing. Keith also grew flustered, then, and back-pedalled to explain himself.

“I mean,” he rushed out, “it’s just, you’re always hitting on girls. Nyma, the mer-people – Allura. You talk about Allura all the time. Hell, Lance, you _died_ for her. I thought you … I didn’t think you were into guys, as well.”

Lance ducked. The mattress felt too warm under him, all of a sudden, the bright room too small. “Neither did I,” he said, in a tiny voice. He both wanted Keith there and didn’t, wanted to cry and run and crawl into a hole to die all at once.

Keith swallowed hard. “And now?” he pressed.

Lance shrugged.

Everything he liked about Allura … Keith had, too. A kind heart, even if it was cloaked in a thorny exterior. Devotion to loved ones, to _family_. Good looks, bravery, strength of mind and body. A resolve to keep fighting, no matter what. Quiet moments of weakness – a rare vulnerability that stirred something focused and protective in Lance.

Keith cared about him, in a way Allura didn’t seem to. She was a good friend, sure, supporting him when he needed it most, but … Keith was _more_. He _meant_ more, to Lance. Lance had just been so caught up in who he thought he was, he hadn’t noticed until the fever tore those preconceptions down.

“Have you ever … realised something,” said Lance, muted in the mess of his feelings. “Something that went against everything you thought you knew about yourself?”

At that, Keith huffed a laugh through his nose. He slouched in his chair, knees apart, fingers linked between his thighs. Lance’s jacket bowed through the gap in his legs, one sleeve hanging limp. “Does finding out I’m half-alien count?”

Lance studied his fellow Paladin, apologetic. He then licked his lips, shifted atop his squeaky mattress. For the first time since waking, he felt a spark of pain in his joints.

“This must be awkward for you, huh?” he said, and managed to crack that trademark smirk. “You’re taking this awful cool, man. If _I_ was the cause of a friend’s sexual revelation, I’d be a lot more creeped out.”

Keith quashed the urge to squeeze his shoulder in sympathy, like Shiro had done so many times for him. “I think I might be, if I didn’t already agree to date you.”

Lance’s jaw dropped, this new revelation hitting him with the force of the Galra battleship. He sat straighter, brought up his long legs to support himself. Keith had never seen his blue eyes so wide.

“You suggested it,” said Keith, blunt. “When you were … woozy. I didn’t get chance to answer, but–”

“I asked you out?” Lance spluttered.

With forced patience, Keith wiped flecks of Lance’s spittle from his face. “Not in so many words,” he said. “Your _exact_ words were ‘we should date’. Then you passed out. Rude.”

Lance didn’t know what to do with his hands. “I guess I’m braver when I’m sick,” he said. To busy his fingers, he dug both thumbnails into the hem of his shirt. Was the air always so thin in here? “But you, uh … you’re interested? In dating? _Me_?”

Keith didn’t falter. “I am,” he said. “I’ve been interested in your dumb ass ever since I watched you wake the Blue Lion back on Earth.”

Lance licked his lips. The ball-of-light-in-the-ribcage feeling surged to life, swelling into a supernova when one corner of Keith’s mouth twitched upward. The Black Paladin was milking this moment for all it was worth, but Lance couldn’t bring himself to care.

“Sweet.”

 

* * *

 

Once Lance felt strong enough, Keith took him outside for some fresh air.

He didn’t know if they were allowed to leave the ward, but Keith wanted to physically _be_ as ‘on top of the world’ as he felt. He snuck the shaky Red Paladin into the alien hospital’s elevator, the both of them nervous as youngsters in their parents’ stolen car. Lance slung an arm around him for support, and Keith helped walk him up a short set of stairs and onto the roof.

The cool breeze lifted their messy hair, made Keith conscious of the grease in his roots. He hadn’t left Lance’s side once while the younger man recovered from his infected wound, but stayed with him as asked. Keith was tired, hungry, stiff-backed, and uncomfortable in too-small clothes – but he was _happy_.

They sat with their legs dangling over the edge of the roof, high above the rest of the world. Up here, Keith understood why Lance liked water so much. The planet’s ocean sprawled as far as one could see, a rippling mosaic of refracted light and colour. They’d shared a sunset on that desert world, but it had been nothing like this.

As the sky darkened, lavish reds bleeding into heavy blues and indigos, the two pressed their shoulders together and sighed.

“So …” said Lance, heart in his throat. For all his flirting, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in an actual relationship. The nerves settled somewhat when he reminded himself that it was _just Keith_. No-one scary.

“So,” Keith echoed. He smiled to himself, jostled Lance’s shoulder with his own. “Should we, like … tell people? About us?”

Lance let his neck flop back, eyes closed. “I dunno yet,” he said. “Let’s wait a while. Figure things out first.”

In his mind, Keith agreed. He wanted to enjoy this without spectators, at least for a little bit. “I’m pretty sure Hunk and Pidge have money on us,” he said. Frowned. “I hope Mom’s okay with it.”

Lance straightened at that, sour. “I’m not dating _her_ ,” he said.

Keith hummed. He couldn’t imagine Krolia having a problem with her son dating another boy; she herself had fallen in love a different species altogether.

Now that it wouldn’t seem weird, Keith gave in to the urge for more physical contact.

He shuffled closer, hunching just enough to nudge the side of his forehead against Lance’s. Lance’s hair tickled through his own, curls stubborn against Keith’s soft waves. Keith could smell him, amid the sky and the salt of the ocean, sweet cologne and faint chemicals from skincare products. He’d imagined this, nestling against Lance, had dreamed of it so many times since their space-adventure began.

Lance went tense for a second, then unclenched when he realised what Keith was doing. He turned his head, nuzzled his nose to Keith’s cheek. It felt natural, easy, and Keith smelled good, his weight warm and welcoming.

Keith half-twisted where he sat, shifted so that only one leg dangled off the roof. Lance kept his palms on the ground, supporting him and Keith both. Testing the waters, Keith moved so they were almost nose-to-nose. Lance held his breath, felt Keith’s own ghost over his skin.

Keith knew what came next, but that didn’t make it any easier. Tilt jaw, pucker lips, and … god, Lance was right there. _Waiting_. Keith’s face felt like fire, embarrassment hot as Lance’s lips curled in a smirk.

“You okay, samurai?” he said. “Hey, if you need some pro tips on smooching, I can–”

Keith mashed their mouths together, cutting off the playful taunt.

He’d jerked forward with enough force that Lance stumbled on his palms, almost knocked flat. Lance managed to catch himself, the quick pain of biting his own tongue swallowed by pleasant surprise. Keith’s lips were dry but not scratchy, a little cooler than Lance expected, inexperienced but hungry. Lance fixed the angle, fighting down a laugh. Keith put two-hundred percent into everything he did, and it seemed kissing was no exception. It was kind of impressive, actually.

When the two broke for air, Keith ducked so that Lance couldn’t read his expression. “It was bad, wasn’t it?” Keith bit out. Lance raised one hand from the roof, wiped it on his shirt before threading long fingers into that wild mullet. Keith wanted to shy away, anxious. “I know it was bad. I’ve never … I mean….”

Lance’s eyes went wide. “Keith,” he said, “was that your first kiss?”

Keith wanted to leap from the roof. He balled his fists on the gritty tile, spine bowed.

Gently, Lance tugged at Keith’s hair to lift his head. To Keith’s shock, Lance looked neither offended nor disgusted at his terrible performance. Instead, the lanky Paladin offered him a grin.

“I’m honoured,” said Lance.

Keith’s cheeks burned, but there was nothing scathing in the comment. Lance then adjusted his slump, shimmied around to snake a long arm around Keith’s shoulders. Too fast for Keith to react, he planted a hard kiss to Keith’s temple and pulled him into a sideways half-hug.

“It wasn’t _awful_ , for your first try,” Lance said. He gave the stunned Keith a light squeeze, and settled with him to watch the sea beneath the mantle of twilight. He snorted, cocky with glee. “And, y’know. We’ve got plenty of time to practice, if you want. I’m serious about those pro tips.”

Keith almost didn’t believe his ears. He slid a hand across to rest on Lance’s thigh, atop the spot where he’d been wounded, and melted against his side. When all of this was over, when Voltron retired and they settled back on Earth, he’d get a pet crab or spider. Some kind of insectoid with claws, to remind him of how they got here.

“Shut your quiznak, Lance.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading, all, and again to the lovely folks who nourished my soul via feedback! Feel free to hit up my [Tumblr](https://toastypaladin.tumblr.com/), for updates on future fics and possibly fanart.


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